September 2017 Summaries

Social media networks connect individuals and organizations globally, often using follow suggestion functionalities to enhance user engagement by recommending connections based on career, interests, or existing connections. This feature helps create a dynamic and engaging network, encouraging users to interact more and providing developers with valuable insights for targeted marketing. Follow suggestions can be implemented through various methods, including neighborhood-based, path-based, similarity-based, and machine learning-based approaches, each leveraging different algorithms to predict potential connections. These predictions can also be applied in other contexts, such as e-commerce, to recommend products. Stream offers personalized recommendation systems, allowing clients to integrate and scale follow suggestions according to their specific needs.

Stream is actively engaging with the open-source community by developing Winds 2.0, an updated version of their aggregated and personalized RSS reader, which will now include podcast support, enhanced social features, and native applications for iOS and Android. The development team has chosen React Native to enable cross-platform support and has utilized Expo to streamline the process. As part of their exploratory efforts, they created an audio player proof of concept using React Native and Expo's audio API, incorporating features like external URL support, play/pause, skip/seek, and speed control. Although the latest Expo SDK does not yet support audio backgrounding, the team is pleased with the overall outcome and is working closely with Expo to address this limitation. The project is open-source, with the code available on GitHub, inviting community contributions and feedback. Stream also offers additional resources, including tutorials and a React Native library, to help developers create social networks and newsfeeds using their technology.

Stream has integrated TypeScript Type Definitions into its JavaScript API Client library, driven by growing interest and discussions with TypeScript and Angular developers. This integration simplifies the process of using the library by providing type hints, static type checking, and enhanced IDE features like code completion, which improve developer experience and reduce bugs. The TypeScript language, a superset of JavaScript, offers optional type hints and facilitates integration between codebases, which are some of its key attractions. The Type Definitions are bundled directly within the JavaScript package, ensuring they are versioned together, although alternative distribution methods like the DefinitelyTyped repository exist for those without commit access. With the implementation of Type Definitions, Stream's library offers immediate benefits to developers, who can access these features by upgrading to version 3.6.0 or exploring the Stream Angular Example project on GitHub.